Top 5 Linux Video Editor Software

byVivek GiteonAugust 18, 2009

I'm looking for a free video editor similar to - Adobe Premiere Pro, Apple iMovie, Final Cut Pro or Microsoft Movie Maker under Linux Desktop operating system. My tasks are pretty simple such as cutting, filtering, and encoding tasks etc. Can you provide me a list of FOSS software which can be used for video capture and video editing purposes under Fedora or Ubuntu Linux desktop systems? A non-linear editing system (NLE) is a video editing (NLVE) or audio editing (NLAE) system which can provide editing method for video clips or frams. You will be able to access any frame in a video clip. Non-linear editing is done for film and television post-production. However, the cost of editing system gone down and non-linear editing tools (including software) are now within the reach of most home users.

MS-Windows PC included Windows Movie Maker and Apple computer comes with iMovie. Most Linux based editing software can now be downloaded free of charge from the Internet. You also need a video capture card and a FireWire connection to capture digital video from a DV camera.

OpenSHOT

OpenShot is an open-source program that creates, modifies, and edits video files. This is the most stable and easy to use program on Linux. If you are looking for alternative to Windows Movie Maker or Apple iMoive, try OpenSHOT. Here is a sample video I created for my youtube channel using OpenSHOT video editor:

Avidemux

Avidemux is a free video editor designed for simple cutting, filtering and encoding tasks. It supports many file types, including AVI, DVD compatible MPEG files, MP4 and ASF, using a variety of codecs. Tasks can be automated using projects, job queue and powerful scripting capabilities. Avidemux is available for Linux, BSD, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows under the GNU GPL license.

Fig.01: Avidemux in Action under Ubuntu (image credit: Wikipedia)

How Do I Install Avidemux Under Debian / Ubuntu Linux Desktop?

Type the following command:$ sudo apt-get install avidemux

Embedding The Subtitles to AVI By Using Avidemux

Cinelerra

Cinelerra is the most advanced non-linear video editor and compositor for Linux. Cinelerra also includes a video compositing engine, allowing the user to perform common compositing operations such as keying and mattes. Cinelerra includes support for very high-fidelity audio and video: it processes audio using 64 bits of precision, and can work in both RGBA and YUVA color spaces, using floating-point and 16-bit integer representations, respectively. It is resolution and frame rate-independent, meaning that it can support video of any speed and size.

Fig.02: Cinelerra Rendering in Action (credit Cinelerra project)

Video editing in Ubuntu Using Cinelerra Part 1

Cinelerra Tutorial Capturing Desktop Screens

Kdenlive

Kdenlive is an intuitive and powerful multi-track video editor, including most recent video technologies. Kdenlive supports all of the formats supported by FFmpeg (such as QuickTime, AVI, WMV, MPEG, and Flash Video), and also supports 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios for both PAL, NTSC and various HD standards, including HDV. Video can also be exported to DV devices, or written to a DVD with chapters and a simple menu. Kdenlive packages are freely available for GNU/Linux, FreeBSD and Mac OS X under the terms of GNU General Public License version 2 or any version later.

Fig.03: Kdenlive in Action (credit: Kdenlive project)

How Do I Install Kdenlive Under Debian / Ubuntu Linux Desktop?

Type the following command:$ sudo apt-get install kdenlive

Video Effects & Stacking - Kdenlive 0.7 - Ubuntu 8.10

Kino

Kino is a non-linear DV editor for GNU/Linux. It features excellent integration with IEEE-1394 for capture, VTR control, and recording back to the camera. It captures video to disk in Raw DV and AVI format, in both type-1 DV and type-2 DV (separate audio stream) encodings.

Fig.04: Kino Main Window (image credit - Kino porject)

How Do I Install Kino Under Debian / Ubuntu Linux Desktop?

Type the following command:$ sudo apt-get install kino

LINUX video capture - KINO Tutorial

LiVES

LiVES (LiVES is a Video Editing System) is a free software video editing program and VJ tool. LiVES mixes realtime video performance and non-linear editing in one professional quality application. It will let you start editing and making video right away, without having to worry about formats, frame sizes, or framerates. It is a very flexible tool which is used by both professional VJ's and video editors - mix and switch clips from the keyboard, use dozens of realtime effects, trim and edit your clips in the clip editor, and bring them together using the multitrack timeline. You can even record your performance in real time, and then edit it further or render it straight away.

For the more technically minded, the application is frame and sample accurate, and it can be controlled remotely or scripted for use as a video server. And it supports all of the latest free standards.

Blender - 3D animation suite (cross-platform) : Blender is a 3D graphics application. It can be used for modeling, UV unwrapping, texturing, rigging, water simulations, skinning, animating, rendering, particle and other simulations, non-linear editing, compositing, and creating interactive 3D applications, including games. Blender's features include advanced simulation tools such as rigid body, fluid, cloth and softbody dynamics, modifier based modeling tools, powerful character animation tools, a node based material and compositing system and Python for embedded scripting.

PiTiVi : PiTiVi is a program for video editing based on the GStreamer framework. It can - Capture and encode audio and video, with formats supported by GStreamer, split and trim video clips, split and trim audio, render projects in any format supported by the GStreamer framework etc.

Our Recommendation

Use Cinelerra for professional work. It is very fast, and can handle a heavy load. You can also obtain paid support for this product.

Most of this softwares are buggy and you will have time to run it. If you have good program you have tried please post it here. I have tried GTK-Recordmydesktop. I think that was the name :D. It’s not bad, but it needs a lot of improvement to be able to edit/cut what you have done.

stu, if you want your hand held through the process of learning how to use a new program, perhaps Linux isn’t for you. Microsoft and Apple will gladly do most of your work for you, for a price, and if that isn’t easy enough there’s always Fisher Price.

Cinelerra is as good as any professional tool, even Final Cut Pro, which is the premier video editor – the one the real pros use. Like Final Cut Pro, it requires some significant learning to be able to use well, but it is much more powerful than Windows Movie Maker. If all you are doing is YouTube videos, it’s not for you.

Any of the other tools will work fine.

Ashwani/Ahmed, GTK-Recordmydesktop is fine for, you guessed it, recording your desktop. Editing, on the other hand, is better done in any of the products reviewed in the article. I don’t know what versions you used, Ahmed, but I find none of these (excluding Avidemux which I don’t use) to be significantly more buggy than the commercial offerings.

The real pros use Avid. And no WAY does cine(whatever you callit) have the features that FCP has. Not even close. And I have yet to find a linux app that is NOT significantly more buggy than a commercial software for Mac or Windows. Which is hella unfortunate, but that is the truth.

As a part time prof editor, I’ve been trying and trying to find an open-source video editing program, to be honest, a couple of them have the features, it’s just they’re all incredibly buggy. It does annoy me that open-source video editing is ‘sold’ as a potential alternative but unless all these bugs can be worked out, there’s no hope for it.

Paul, this is the biggest problem with getting linux accepted. “If you can’t figure it out, theres always fisher price.” that attitude makes people who are having difficulty turn back to other operating systems. Not everyone out there is a computer geek, many have no clue about terminal or how to find and install software. Windows has wizards, with Linux, sometimes you need to be a wizard. So lighten-up and remember that people will judge linux by the people they meet. Be an ambassador for the movement, not an ass.

There are no other legitimate operating systems. Even the international space station had to go all Linux for the sack of performance, reliability and stability. The problem with the world is laziness. we need to learn our tech to protect us from crooks in power. Tech is here to stay people. Time to roll up your sleeves. You will be happy you did. Just take it a baby-step at a time. Back up and don’t worry about reinstalling.

Linux is much easier than MS windows in most cases. Install is easier and faster, including getting all the software you need up and running. I really like KDE Sabayon but newbies might be happier with Mint Linux.

My favorite video editor is Blender 3d. It is super easy and VERY stable; I have never had it crash on me. It is not that sophisticated with it comes to video and does have a learning curve but is very powerful, if you are willing to learn.

Paul, I’ve been using Linux for the better part of 10 years, all the way back to Mandrake 6. I didn’t say I needed someone to hold my hand, ( I have relooked at my post…nope not there) I simply ask a question…and your response is the very reason I have never responded to anything before…and I guess my reason for not posting is now confirmed. Thanks Paul

stu, you beat me to it. If there is one single thing I’d pick if asked with what’s wrong with Linux, it has to be the responses from fanbois when looking for help and advice.

That said, I am also long time ‘nix user (from before we had the GUI) and other OS. Linux has its place but fast video editing isn’t one of them. My office needs to edit about 3 hours of video every day, splicing together the scenes from two fixed cameras. There is some Linux software that might do it, but it is just too slow, awkward and buggy to use. We use Womble’s DVD Wizard software on Windows on that. It’s not expensive, good support and very fast to use even on lower spec hardware.

For screen capture tutorials we use http://www.debugmode.com/wink/ – the price is right and it is very good at what it does and can run on Linux (x86).

Ya know, I have to chime in here. I am using Ubuntu. I love it but what I don’t love is the attitude of some of the Ubuntu techies. I am not a programmer but I am far from computer illiterate, in fact, over the weekend I was in the company of a computer programmer who complimented me on my knowledge…self-taught at that. I like the challenge of Ubuntu but sometimes you just need a question answered that will help you move on to your next phase of research. I sometimes spend weeks…WEEKS, researching a problem before I ask a question. And that is not a complaint…I like doing the research. What I don’t like are the snotty responses you sometimes get from the techies…almost as bad as Mac lovers. So I have learned not to bother with the Ubuntu support sites so much and just do general research on the ‘net , like YouTube (where I have found many of my answers, thank you). On the one hand…it’s too bad some of the attitudes are so cheeky. On the other hand, I learn a lot.

When we switched to Linux the kids wanted a program to download their picturese (nothing comes close to DigiKam) and to put their skateboarding videos on youtube and that was KDEnlive.

The MAJORITY of computer users are not making a full feature film (well Mac users like to think they are). All they want is to DL a few videos from tehir cameras, put them together with some transitions, add a soundtrack and maybe add some text. What you want is a iMovie, Windows Movie Maker competitor, NOT Premiere.

Dont get me wrong, Im happy there are high end video apps out there but for the overwhelming majority dumb wins every time.

As an aside, how hard would it be for these programs and others to have two interfaces? One full option and one that gives you just the basic stuff most people will use. It would make the learning curve easier for those that need more while those taht dont could just keep using the easy interface.

Whether you’re cutting a feature or just editing a short or two or even a youtube video, having an NLE that you don’t have to wonder about (whether it’s going to just slowly fall apart) is preferable. What is the basic stuff most people use? I’m a rather accomplished editor and I find that even for the simplest projects I tend to use advanced techniques. However, that doesn’t stop me hoping that someday someone is going to create an NLE for Linux (commercial or not) so that I can make the switch full time. Because I love the command line and I love the free part, and I like being part of the friendly community…the more time I can spend hacking wifi the better.

Paul, none of the above hold a candle to the commercial offerings. Fisherprice or whatever. From what I’ve experienced, the more expensive packages, have easier to use interfaces. You could also make your own pencil and paper. Then write a letter to your grandmother and tell her how long it took. Pros have a job to do. We don’t like bullsh1t.

Then again, I build my own workstations/networks/NAS/etc. So perhaps there is that pro video editor that also writes his own software. Respect!

Cinelerra is the only multi-track NLE that is somewhat stable. However, it is ugly and difficult to use. I’ve used Finalcut, Premiere, Vegas, and plenty of hardware. All of those kick any of these apps in terms of features and stability.

Cinelerra *had* the most promise and it’s probably good if you want to run a TV station. However, it’s not creative at all. Simple edits are easy. However, anything else can become a stunt. IMO, Kdenlive has seen the quickest growth. Lives is also doing well. In the next few years we may see those apps grow into the free alternative of Finalcut – but not Cinelerra. It does what it does, and there is no need to change.

However, any pro would not waste their time on this software. A TV station or company that needs to do the same work over and over (weddings?) might do good to use this as they can save a substantial about of money if they have tens or hundreds of workstations. However, the work flow needs to be thoroughly tested and decided upon.

Here’s a good FOSS for Windows: Virtualdub. Kinda like Avidemux. Probably the only one on this list a pro would use. But then again, having to switch between OSes is not fun. So hence Virtualdub.

wow, the next time i buy a tv station ill cherish these words. the fact that something is “ugly” wont stop me from using it effectively. it would seem to me someone so experienced as those few complainers ive seen so far, are just trolling.

That was the first video editing software package I bought for making home movies. It was easy to use, intuitive even, although some bits were a bit clunky. After making 20 or so coasters, it turned out to be near impossible to burn DVDs. Going online I discovered that burning DVDs was a common problem that upgrading wouldn’t help so I bought Vegas. Since my goal is primarily making home movies for distribution to a far flung computer illiterate family (and that isn’t even just the octegenarians) this is important.

I’m working up to switching to linux, and so am looking into video editing solutions.

don’t make me laugh, FINAL CUT is the most used and better editing software, AVID is damn good to but lost a lot of clients to apple… i was one of those, used for many years a media composer, but now only use Final Cut.

You really need to check out Pitivi, it is improving in leaps and bounds. It’s straight forward to use and works extremely well. The latest version .13.2 is a joy to use. It is not feature complete yet but then what FLOSS project is. Check it out. I highly recommend it.

I have worked with several commercial offerings including Final Cut Pro, Premiere and Video Wave. I recently used Cinelera (on Ubuntu Hardy) on several projects and I like it very much. Cinelera is much more powerful than Video Wave and is more near the class of Final Cut Pro and Premiere. Sure, Cinelera has some stability issues from time to time but they are not major and it also recovers nicely since it saves your most recent changes anyway. To be fair, I have seen similar stability issues with the commercial products as well so I do not find this aspect of Cinelera any different.

Thanks for the great videos. I bet you have great memories of the galapogos islands. It sure looks like an adventure of a lifetime! Pretty decent edits, however I think the productions i do in vegas are more demanding in terms of track motion and effects than what cinelera has to offer. For now i will stick to vegas pro. Thanks again.

Kdenlive has worked for me since the 0.7 release. It is a bit buggy and does have a few stability issues but it seems to be the most iMovie like that i have found. I don’t have much experience with Cinelerra but it seemed to have more options than I needed.

Trey has a good point, I don’t want to do much more than combine my video with a few transitions and a soundtrack. Kdenlive works fine for that. My biggest issue with Linux video editing is the lack of good transitions and simple drag and drop functionality. Also DVD menu creation is still really poor on Linux. But over the last four years it has gotten much better.

I’m a big fan of OpenShot. I can hardly wait for the first stable release of it. It shows a lot of promise as far as effects and ease of use. I used Kdenlive for a school project once; it didn’t work out so well. For some reason, I had a heckuva lot of problems with encoding it. Thankfully my teacher had VLC, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to hand it in at all. It seemed pretty unstable too, but I had to use it because none of the other ones had effects (at least, not at the time).

I’ve had good luck with Lives. I’ve been able to accomplish things with it that I couldn’t figure out how to do with the others. My main use of video is for web sites. I’ve even created a video sequence from a JPEG still which I then manipulated with Lives tools and output as an animated GIF. I further tune the size of the animation in GIMP which allowed me adjust the the frame rate on a per frame basis.

I am amazed to see that OpenMovieEditor was not mentioned. OME is sort of like Kdenlive, but more stable. It also doesn’t carry the Qt dependency that Kdenlive does. OME is the video editor I use myself and recommend to people and use myself. While it look as daunting as Cinelerra to use at first sight, it is actually really easy to use.

I don’t know who the users are above who think Cinelerra or ANY of the Linux video editors are even remotely close to Adobe Premiere CS4, let alone Final Cut, Express or Pro.

Most reviews of Linux editors have concluded that they all have MAJOR stability issues and lack of features for professional video editing. For home use they may be OK, since home users can afford to recover from crashes and the like. Those using video editors for commercial workflows will find none of these are adequate.

Not that Adobe Premiere doesn’t crash frequently – it does. And Adobe products are bloated, slow and expensive. I have a client that uses both PCs and Macs to do digital conversion of analog video, film and stills, and they are slowly shifting to Final Cut Pro on the Mac platform. It’s by far the best, short of the very expensive Avid products.

Linux still has a long way to go with its video editors – for professional use, at least. But the value of FOSS is choice – we do have several different editors, each progressing at their own pace. Sooner or later we’ll have one that can work in a professional environment – even if it never matches the full feature set of Premiere or Final Cut.

A few months ago I tried Kdenlive for the second time (this time on Fedora 10), but I was disappointed by the constant crashing. Also there is no readily-avaialble installation package for Fedora.

I used to use Kino, but it’s not a NLE.

I use Cinelerra now. It’s powerful but 1. It’s very awkward to learn the GUI 2. I have to manually convert some input files from my camera 3. I have to perform some tricks to get the DVD output right 4. Because of a reported bug, some still images create a funny green image. I wasn’t able to use some still images.

I use Blender 3d for most of my video editing. You can do things with it that you would not beleave! Problem is that Blender3d is its own world and learning it takes time. It is something for a pro with some 3d modeling skills or a normal person that can read and is willing to learn the GUI. Wait for Blender 3D 2.5 to come out. It has an all new interface and new improved work flows! Should be out in a month or two…

The thing about Blender is that the programmers there work fast and this program is changing VERY quickly and improving VERY quickly. If you don’t like it now then check back in 12 months and you will see huge improvements! This vid is very old and opsolite but gives you the idea of Blender’s power.

I make short films, the last one was 30 minutes long, and I used Premiere Pro for it. Premiere was very buggy for me, I don’t know if this is the case for everyone, probably not. I tried (well, let’s say I’ve installed them and looked at them) a few video editors, including Cinelerra, Kdenlive. I found Cinelerra’s interface really ugly (controls, icons…) while Kdenlive seems very clean and functional. I didn’t tried them with real projects, but I’ll try to. But I just can’t imagine Cinelerra is a good software, seeing his ugliness :) I just installed OpenMovieEditor, Pitivi and LiVES. Thanks for your article. Let’s hope for the future of video editing under Linux!

In ALL fields, “real” pros use whatever tools they: 1) Have at hand and/or 2) Are most comfortable with and/or 3) They can afford

All complex tools require you to be able to think about things in the same way the interface designer thought of them–if you can’t do that, it will require rote training and never become “intuitive.”

Technology and civilization make things easier, but actual effort tends to remain the same, since you can offten do far more than without it.

Painters used to make their own paint. Photographers used to make their own glass plates.

The trade off is often money fortime, and the market reflects that. Tools aimed at “pros” tend to be expensive because they are based upon the money saved by their market. Few amatuers or casual users will fork out thousands of dollars for software in order to save a bit of time–even if it would be cost-effective for them, since many people never bother to do cost-benefit analysis.

After experiencing various crashes (on Ubuntu 9.04) with Avidemux, LiVES, and Kino, I switched to Cinelerracv. I had avoided switching becasue it was a bit intimidating at first. Then I discovered the tutorials atAkirad, and with some effort, have mastered its capabilities. Combined with FFMPEG (and a neat little GUIfor it called WinFF) and Audacity for specialized audio work, I have a suite that can do whatever I want and produce it in whatever format I desire. Thanks for the reviews. They provide a great path for investigation…

Kino always seems to be neglected when people are discussing Linux video editing. Perhaps it is considered too basic? I’ve found it superb for simple editing, adding titles, etc of youtube clips and home video. The interface is very intuitive and easy to grasp for the casual video editor. I am sure kdenlive would be a better program but it crashes every time I have ever tried it. I just downloaded latest version now Feb 2010 and crashed within 20 secs of using it. Tried latest pitivi just now also and locked up immediately. Kino is reliable, reasonably attractive, and does the basic job well.

Kino is a great program, but it only does standard definition video, and everything has to be converted to DV files (meaning you need a gigabyte for every 5 minutes of video, so editing an hour long video can easily take 12 gigabytes). Sound editing can also be a bit difficult, but one can always export the soundtrack, edit in Audacity, then dub it back in (and I’ve done this for a couple of videos I’ve made). It’s still my favorite video editing program in spite of these limitations, for now.

OpenShot and Open Movie Editor look interesting but are too new to be feature complete. PiTiVi is in an even more ‘alpha’ state.

Feature wise, Cinelerra looks to be the best fit if you want to do anything serious, and that’s a problem, because it falls apart when doing anything serious thanks to a seriously bug ridden code base. I mean it! This thing is such a race-condition fest, it can’t even open its own project files on my system without crashing! (Start project, add clip, save it, try to load it … freeze!)

When it comes to video NLE under Linux, you’re basically stuck picking the lesser of the evils, ’cause there really is no free ‘works for all’ solution.

Oh – my – goodness, is Cinerella potentially a nice program — but indeed, the interface *colors* alone, make the GUI the most ugly NLE I’ve ever seen.

Don’t the programmers have any sense of good aesthetics? The pale green in the timeline and windows is utterly depressing, if not nausea-inducing, and the multitude of colors, which have no relationship to each other is frightful.

Please, someone, get on the ball with the interface appearance, relative to colors employed alone — and you’d be well on your way to inviting more serious users.

I really much agree with you, I have never been able to keep Cinelerra open for more than 10 minutes. But fortunately for you and me exists Cinecutie, which is Cinelerra with an other GUI, much nicer. You should take a look at it.

Wonderful, Niavlys! Why on earth hadn’t anyone recommended Cinecutie at all, in the past, when objections to Cinerella’s utterly horrific color scheme was mentioned in this Comment thread?

The silence heretofore, on Cinecutie, in this space, until you chimed in, is shocking and strange relative to its wonderful good looks.

I am forthwith determined to both build a Linux box around a six-core AMD processor (my first time ever building a computer), then work my way at learning some introductory skills in the use of Ubuntu, then I’ll install Cinecutie and give her a whirl!

By coincidence I built my first computer a couple of days ago and today I installed my first, well, installation, of Linux Mint. I’m pretty pleased with the results of both endeavours, don’t be scared of building a computer, it’s pretty logical, I made a couple of mistakes but soon rectified them with no resultant collateral damage. I use a commercial ie. paid for video editing software for video editing, but it has faults, a window disappears out of sight and you have to create another user to make it appear. I’ll give Linux Mint a fair trial – and use it for video editing.

Like you, I’ve never been able to keep Cinelerra open for more than 10 minutes but in my case, the reason wasn’t the ugly UI. The problem is rather that it is a total crashfest! I do not know a single piece of software under Linux that exhibits that many lockups, race conditions, segfaults etc etc. Heck, on my system, it can’t even load a project that it saved 2 minutes earlier without crashing and that sadly ruins the featurewise winner of the competition completely.

Oh well, Hopefully OpenShot, Open Movie Editor and PiTiVi will keep going and some day surpass it.

Cinelerra – GUI is ugly, you guys do not know that it is MOTIF if you know what MOTIF is. If you like the bloat GUIs use Microsoft. Who cares about all this 3D, processing power and memory waisting crap. I am using Cinelerra for several years, the film studios using it- it is stuff for pros and it does things that even latest FCP can’t do. Yes – you can make stuff for TV studios, you make stuff in any format, in any aspect ratio in any fp/s you can think off. You can create amazing FX with it. Cinelerra is not for amateurs, if you have one of these consumer video cams and just cutting wedding video the KINO would be your bet, if you are VJay – use LIVES this stuff is made for this kind of game. If you never made any of the films shown in cinemas – do not complain about Cinelerra – is not for you. I am running it on 4 x 4core Xeon CPUs at 3.2 GHz (64bit system) Gentoo Linux and have no problems. In nutshell – you need at least 64bits Athlon with heaps of RAM and decent 10k or 15k SCSI or SATA hard drives. My “farm” consists of HP-Ux 11 on 4xPA RISC and Solaris10 on SUN 10k with 32 CPUs running Cinelerra …. and can not remember when it did crushed. Rendering 90 min (1920×1152) YUV2 film takes under 2 min.

After briefly testing all the various open-source video editors I could find easily available for fedora 13, I came to the conclusion that kdenlive was the best fit. By and large most of the editors were plain unusable for more than 5 minutes or just had too many limitations. kdenlive has its own faults, including that its documentation is not always clear and one must refer to it constantly when figuring out the UI (hint: video tutorials were so useful to understanding the docs). Essentially, I can now do almost anything I need to with kdenlive now, but I would greatly appreciate it if the devs could improve rendering time, update the dvd creation wizard to support blu-ray, and add more rendering options (for example, ogv output does not support quality levels, only bitrates). As for stability, I saw several crashes when I was first exploring features, but none since.

I use Cinelerra on a cheap eMachines system from Wal-Mart and have never had it crash. The system has a 2.66 GHz processor, 4 Gigabytes of RAM, and… get this… I even use the horrific onboard video it came with. Not a problem at all.

The problem average people have with Cinelerra is that it is truly complicated and requires time spent learning about the real underpinnings of video production technology in order to use it to its full potential. But the learning is worth it. What a person learns by digging deep into the intricacies of video production will allow a deeper understanding of what is going on with even “hand-holding” software.

Using simple cut/copy/move video editors is like the average person who only wants to get into the car, turn the key, press the pedal and to then simply drive without any appreciation of what goes on under the hood of the car.

Using something like Cinelerra is like people who study how a car operates so they can fix something themselves rather than paying large sums of money to a mechanic to do even the simplest repair.

Lazy folks who don’t like to read and to experiment should stick with everything from iMovie (Apple) or Movie Maker (Windows) up to about Sony Vegas Pro. From there, those who want to dig deep into understanding video can then go with Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premier, and yes, even Cinelerra.

I’m always open minded in tying new things especially free software. I´m used to work with all the cutting programs from Premiere Pro over Final Cut, Avid, Pinnacle, Premiere Elements, iMovie to Moviemaker. As an educated Movie editor / producer my favorite´s are Premiere and Final Cut because they are similar and easy to use. You don´t need to think around the corner. Everything is right there where it should be. Because that i’m searching four a similar alternative in linux. Cinelerra looks right from the beginning a little bit like that. And yes there are similarities between Cinelerra, Premiere Pro and Final Cut. But the interface doesn’t look good. Ugly buttons and bars, the thing who show’s the sound volume is in every window like the play/stop/rew/ffd/… buttons in every single window. Com on guys less is more. In that way i like Kdenlive better. Nicer interface, witch is easy to adjust like Premiere Pro. One thing i appreciate is the full screen possibility and that everything is still one program window not like Cinelerra many! But why is not video and audio separated from each other. Feels like iMovie / Premiere Elements or so. Not nice to work with in a TV studio. The rest of those fife programs i will not even go into because there have not enough functions to compare with. Four a hobby editor it should be enough like iMovie, Premiere Elements or Pinnacle but four a professional don’t. most importent for a Professionell Movie Editor are following Effects and Transitions. Transissons – Audio: Gain ;Video: Dissolve FX – Audio: EQ, Noise filter, Compressor, Extender, Limiter, Gate, Rewerb ; Video: Color corrector, Motion, Opacity, sharpen, blur, Croma key,… I hope that Kdenlive and Cinelerra developing in the right direction and that they will have more support four more video formats that today that even i some day can leave both Windows and MacOs behind myself and start editing in Linux.

David, Nice, balanced post. Like you I do a lot of video editing. We frequently need to mix/ dub sound from another video source onto the main video file and eventually found a piece of software that does it exceedingly well. So we gravitate to what becomes our bench mark.

I am a long time ‘nix user, but let’s face it, when it comes to multimedia software, especially video cutting/editing/dubbing software, there is nothing that will do the job reliably, intuitively at a semi-professional or professional level. I think the main word is “intuitively”.

I’ve used video editing software in Windows, and there is *nothing* intuitive about it. All of the software programs I’ve used are so loaded with DRM that trying to burn your home movies to DVD is a an adventure, often in futility. One of the commercial “home use” software package I bought was fairly intuitive, but the DRM made it incapable of burning DVDs. My prime reason for wanting to be able to video edit is so I can put together home movie compilations for all the computer illiterates and senior citizens in my family. They watch movies on TV and can just about handle popping a DVD in. I’m tired of having some of my homemade DVDs work in Dad’s machine, but then refusing to play in my sister’s.

Coming from a film editing background I *know* how to edit, it’s just the tools I need to master. It should not be that hard. What’s finally pushed me over the edge is that the windows codec is broken (I have the worst lemon version of XP you can imagine) so that I can’t even see the images for the thousands of hours of video I have recorded with my Canon camera in the premium video editing software available for Windows But I can’t replace the codec because Windows thinks it works, so it won’t reinstall. Which is too bad because I slaved to learn that bloody commercial editing software that cost a bomb and got quite good at it. But intuitive? No way, Pierre.

(BTW, I *know* my images are still intact because I can watch them on VLC.)

If I was willing to continue using commercial ransomeware, what I would be doing right about now would be switching to Apple, because apple video editing does everything you need and it works. Every time over the last few years I’ve asked anyone who has made their own professional looking video what software they used, the answer is ALWAYS Apple. I know somebody who mailed all of his original home movies (we’re talking film here) to Europe so a relative using Apple could make them into DVDs. But Apple’s too busy turning into big brother for my liking, so if I have to start over, I’m migrating to Linux. There is no point in struggling to learn something new and even get good at it only to have control of your work wrested from you by corporate controls.

I’ve twiddled around with a few of the programs mentioned here but they all seem horrifically counter-intuitive. That is to say, I could not figure them out. (and I have the strong motivation of a soccer team clamoring for their annual ‘best of’ movie.) Windows might be f#2%ed, but Apple is downright frightening these days. Free is more and more the only way to go.

Someone I know just suggested Pitivi, so that’s the next one I’ll try.

You’re missing the point; ‘nix has its place. Our servers run on it. My netbook runs it. My web development is done on it. Our databases run on it. But I don’t have time to “try” this bit of software or that software for video editing in the hope that it will provide the magic bullet. In any case, as I have stated elsewhere, every video editing program I have tried on linux has one or more severe failings in respect of the things I need to do. Attempts at creating robust video editing software on linux are, IMO, amateurish.

The point is, I make some of my income from editing video files. They are an important part of our business’s value adding strategies. So I don’t have time to experiment. I need something that works and is easy for our staff to master. Windows and Mac software does and, like most businesses, we’re happy to pay the price so that we can get on with the job. BTW, the package we’re using costs less than $100.00 per seat, has easy to understand configuration and user settings, is easy to master, makes editing, cutting, dubbing a doddle. It also batches files for rendering (from the GUI). it is reliable and robust, comes with excellent support and the authors have been quick to respond to requests for new features. It is also written to actually run in a multitasking environment so we can do other things when video files are being rendered. Linux authors, take note.

Nevertheless, when you find the elusive, easy to use video editing software that has the features I mention, that doesn't crash, or at least when it does crash recovers files the user was working on, that doesn't need constant tweaking using the shell, that has reasonable, non obfuscated documentation in understandable english, please let me know. I will buy you a beer and the software without hesitation.

Thank you for that insight. Clearly all of us out here who suffer from the appallingly low USB transfer problems lack your knowledge and experience. We should be thoroughly ashamed of ourselves for being so incredibly stupid.

Just as an example to show how badly we are served with creative multimedia software on linux:

I have 12 images and 2:30m audio (mp3). I want to create a simple slide show with cross fade transitions. The slide show duration must match the music duration. In windows or the mac, pick your software. I’m using MemoriesOnTV, but WIndows Movie Maker or NeroVision of MPEG video wizard will do.

16:9 aspect, PAL. mpg 720p Drop the image files on the time line Drop the music file on the audio time line. There’ll be a menu option to sync the slides and music. Do it Select transition, Apply to all.

Time taken, less than a minute,

Render!

Now, show me software on Linux that does that without going crazy trying to work out whether or not the required functions exist and, if they do, where has the programmer hidden them.

>Just as an example to show how badly we are served with creative multimedia >software on linux: > >I have 12 images and 2:30m audio (mp3). I want to create a simple slide show >with cross fade transitions.

To turn your example upside down…

Yes, windows movie maker wizard will do what you are looking for. Just as MS Paint is the simplest, best program to open a picture and change 1 pixel.

But what happens when you want to change more than one pixel? You could do fantastic effects in MS Paint one pixel at a time, but Photoshop or Gimp are the right tools for complex jobs with pictures.

To go to your example, what happens when you want to do more than a simple powerpoint slide show? For example, if you want to pan over your images, zoom out, flip a newspaper page to the next image. Or you want to project your slides onto a cube, and rotate the cube for the next image. Or you want to do a professional title sequence.

You can’t do that with movie maker or even imovie. But you can with Blender.

The argument is that software on other OSs is easier to use, faster, more reliable, more productive.

Linux Defence: Ahh, yes, OK, if you only want to do simple stuff you need to use Windows of Macs, but for really complicated, sophisticated stuff that “puts you in charge”, use linux. “Puts you in charge” means, BTW, get ready for a long learning curve using google as your manual.

BTW, the software I use on Windows does all the stuff you mention easily and intuitively. AND it lets me compose that slideshow in under a minute.

This is not a Linux defence. This is classic user interface tradeoff on all platforms- its Photoshop vs MS Paint. MS Paint might look easy to use, but as soon as you want to do anything outside its scope, it is quickly extremely difficult and frustrating- it would take an expert to do anything complex with it. Photoshop looks like a huge learning curve for my mother, but it is the best app out there for photo editing. After some practice, novices can do powerful things with Photoshop.

Similarly, Maya, Avid, Piranha, Nuke, Softimage, Fusion, Smoke and an enormous host of other film editing systems are complicated, but they are the defacto industry standards. And they all run on Linux. In fact, almost everything a high end studio does for film will on Linux, and it is the platform of choice for many of them.

and partly with Paul. The classic argument is always ‘yeah, if you want to do things easy, you should not be in Linux’

That actually is a big argument against Linux and it is undeserved. My 10 year old uses Linux and I am using both. Windows easier in one aspect and linux easier in another aspect. I guess it is mostly what one is used to.

The big plus of Linux is that if something goes awry in Windows I easily think: “and I had to pay xxx f@3king euro’s for that junk”, whereas if something goes bad in Linux, I think: “So what, it is free”

Utter non sequitor. It costs the same amount of time no matter if you’re using Linux or Windows. If the software crashes, and believe me, Windows and Apple products DO crash, then your time investment on EITHER platform goes down the drain. Shucky-darn.

An excellent guide and resources for anyone trying to start editing, and publishing videos. I have used few of these to achieve my video. I use Kino to capture, sometimes Kdenlive to slice( No I know how to do it in cinelerra), and finaly use the cinelerra for the rest of the editing, up to encoding. if they asked me what I wish for for my birthday, I would wish for the Kdenlive to be as powerfull as cinelerra, as it is so logical and easy to use. To me most are buggy, but at the end I managed to edit, and put my composition on Youtube. Check it out. Itś all been done with Linux.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClSdmJa9pL4

I Wish they would stop wasting their time making billions of distributions, and concentrate on making these distibutions compatible, and on making more programs.

After all… every new distro is better than any other in look and feel – but it does not help, when there are no programs to run on this fine new OS.

4 or 5 different distros should be enough. And only one windows manager.

I actually do not understand it with video editing, because look at audio-editing for Linux, it is excellent. Very professional programs for that in Linux, and I haven’t had problems with them regarding stability either.

But none for video editing.

The programs for video editing are buggy, they do not even speak with each other in standard formats, and the UI are so different from each other, people will get confused very easily.

For those who write -ve about all these free GNU software I give 2 solutions, and I hope this will help them. 1/ Become so good in programming, and then help the team. or use it and report the bugs or alternatively 2/ Purchase Adobe premier (Itś not that expensive!) if you are rich enough. I have not used premier fully, but I can say that windows move maker is like a pre-school toy against any of these free software. If people who use these software help a few pounds, once in a while when they can, I am sure more people can be employed to sort out the bugs. To those people who complain, I put one question forward. Have they donated 1 pence to any of the GNU software?? 10 thousand pence=100,000 pounds

Fanboi nonsense. There are many reasonably priced software packages out there that will do all and more than most folks want and need. We need to edit videos from two 1080p fixed point camera sources on a daily basis. The package we use costs less than $100 and puts many of the so called “professional” systems to absolute shame. Regrettably it’s WIndows only, but if it works, use it.

I’ve stated it before; the problem with linux software, barring a few notable exceptions, is that it is put to together by well intentioned amateurs for other amateurs with beer pockets and champagne tastes.

In closing, I had another look at all the Linux based video editing in the (K)Ubuntu repositories last weekend. It remains flaky and very ordinary at best.

@Rune Jensen, if you don’t mind to intall KDE core components, you can use any KDE application you want inside your GNOME and vice versa. Try it, I recently changed to GNOME but I cannot live without some KDE-based applications like K3B or Amarok, for I have not found alternative (to my liking) in GNOME. Also, one of the thing I love from Linux is the variety in the distros. What’s the problem with that? Canonical is doing a great effort to come to home users, more than RedHat or Novell… use then a Debian-based distro like ubuntu, but let us the rest of the people with our distros, with our beloved desktop or window manager… anyway, it doesn’t affect to aplications since we all can compile from source (at least in my case, because I use gentoo and I must always compile from sources), and you can find binaries for debian-based or rpm-based distros.

You, for those pathetic trolls who doesn’t have any respect to people who developes software for free, for your enjoyment, saying that linux video editing sucks, have you tried Autodesk Smoke?

Empty vessels tend to always make the most noise. I challenge any of you clowns to post videos using your “PROFESSIONAL SOFTWARE” in photo/video/music management, video editing and audio editing. I will do the same using only open source. Simple as that.

Get a grip; most of those critical of linux video editing software are saying it is slow, flaky and awkward to use. Some (me) need a rapid way to easily edit and splice for commercial productivity reasons. I have found nothing on Linux that comes close to the software we’re using.

The end result may well be the same, or better according to you, but the time spent and higher blood pressure rates will be significantly more.

Quick test; grab a Canon DV camera, say a HFS20 or HFS21. Record something continuously for 30 minutes in hi-definition. No, hang on, I’ll cut you some slack; record in the camera’s standard definition, wide screen.

Connect camera to your PC. Take any open source video editing software to edit the .ts files off the camera. Sorry, there’s a second challenge. You need to find software that can actually handle the .ts format.

OK, assuming you have the software, how long before you can actually start editing? Once you can start, how fluid is the movement through the file? Is it quick enough to be productive? Or do you sit there waiting for 10 or so minutes as the software sorts itself out.

OK, as what we use in our office, bearing in mind that we need to do rapid editing and splicing of 1080p video from two fixed point cameras, we use http://www.womble.com/ DVD Wizard. The cameras (yes two) get plugged in, the files are dropped on the time lines and within seconds we can start editing. Moving through the files, editing and splicing, is fluid and quick. Rendering the final product is, of course dependent on format as you’d expect but we tend to batch our work and let the jobs run overnight.

We have other high end video editing software that is good at what it does but not nearly as quick as Womble’s software. Horses for courses.

Finally, I am a linux user and have been so for longer than most, given my age. If you can show me software that comes close to the utility and speed and reliability that we curently have for the Linux platform, we’ll change tomorrow.

Easy, download the latest blender and click it to video editing mode. add your film strips and do it all in real time. I am really sick of all this Linux bashing when the problem does not exist. I just did it with video downloaded from the net in TS format.http://www.dododge.net/roku/ts-samples.html

I’ve just read all of the comments here. Some of them were very handy and helpful, some of them were not, and some were purely trollish.

Pierre and Megan, you’ve been trolling these comments for two full years, now. I can see, after carefully reading all of the commentary and the thought behind each of them, that you both are only here to troll and discourage. Neither of you have offered any real concrete proof of anything, and you’ve used smoke and mirrors to try to defend merely what are empty opinions. After two full years of trolling this particular page it’s about time you both got told to get a life.

The fact you both keep stoking flames that don’t need to be there or even that you start a whole new useless argument when none was there only says a lot about two people who have nothing better to do.

I’m a brand new user to Linux (Ubuntu) and I’m in the predicament of needing to edit a short clip together for work with a basic music background track and fade transitions. The deadline for this means it’s doubtful I have time to go through the learning curve of something like Cinelerra or Kdenlive.

Earlier on in this thread a poster asked a very simple question – what is the closest parallel to a *simple* editor like WMM. After having read all the comments I still don’t see a straightforward answer to that question.

I’m not trying to be rude in stating that, just trying to add a post to the thread that makes it simpler for people who might be in a similar boat to find the relevant info…

Without dropping into arguments of UI aesthetics or Cinelerra vs commerical software, which NLE, in your opinion, is the *closest* parallel to WMM?

Hi, I have a Sony camera with DV tape. Looking at your study, it seems to me that, in order to capture the video from camera with firewire cable, the best SW is Kino. Am I wrong? Or all the sw are able to capture DV video from camera?

Last 5 years of my 7 years Linux experience I was regularly challenged by day-to-day video editing tasks. Main content was 720p/1080i/1080p in ts/m2ts/mp4/mov. The most useful instruments that produced a really nice results was combination of avidemux, kdenlive and VirtualDub (under Wine). As per my experience you are able to get excellent results with those tools but the problem is workflow really uncertain and not stable sometimes. Lack of features also has place. But the situation changes. Right now Kdenlive project is really nice. It has tons of features and stable enough for relatively serious editing/finishing. I am sure this won’t be too hard for any person interested to learn Kdenlive workflow. Otherwise this person is too lazy for Linux in general. You may find plenty of video lessons on ytube/vimeo.

Right now there is one really serious competitor coming out with it’s brand new open source non linear video editing product. I am talking about Lightworks` Oscar winnig Editshare which has been released open source last year. Feel free to discover their website http://www.lightworksbeta.com/ and tons of professional features it has. Yes this is not intended for video editing noobies but this is going to become a really brilliant piece of software for Lin/Mac/Win. Right now only Win version is accessible but:

Our progress with porting Lightworks to Linux and Mac OSX is something we get asked about every single day. We’re happy to report that we are making huge strides towards completing the port and we’re aiming to have the first beta release available on 19th December 2011.

Just curious – for home video I need tools for: – mixing / underlaying 2 videos at the same time – adding more than 1 audio track (audio+effects or audio commentary over that) – replay (slow) and playing “video backwards” possibility

people people just remember that these programs are free and give u an idea and also experience on how to use them without paying, i myself have been a pc user for many year and apple has caught my eye. if i get what i want i`ll be using apple for final cut pro editing and filming but also will be running ubuntu on a dual boot for my other programs. the free programs will help me to understand how the editing process works and final cut will make me better. the best of both worlds! Cheers

It’s funny people actually say and think linux right now doesn’t have a good video editor when KDENLive and Openshot will do just about anything you need it to not to mention if you want real power and a so called professional piece of software that will rival any video editor out there you can use the New Blender and it’s VSE

Again, nonsense – Using (K)Ubuntu Oneiric on well specced, almost new hardware.

Openshot, when working with 1080p, is so slow and unresponsive that it is useless. It may be ok for 320 web productions AFAIK, but I don’t dabble much in that.

KDEnlive; crashes with a fatal error about MLT’s SDL not being installed. I have no idea what that means and looking at all the threads about the problem suggests it’s a significant problem stumping many users.

Pierre, did you not see the mention of Blender??? It is GREAT for doing video. Yes, you do have to learn it but you want to do a good job right?? One thing to note. It is best in blender to turn the movie into a series of stills in the openEXR format. It is also important to go into settings and increase the buffer memory so that you get a much faster response as it loads much more movie at one time. Make sure to render the firm into its own director or you will have a LOT of picture files cluttering some other directory! Also more Ram mean better responsiveness and having a SSD drive is also a GREAT benefit. I would think this is true of any system.

KDEnlive works perfectly fine here on Gentoo and has for the last year or so….sounds like a ubuntu specific issue, not suprising since they are gnome focused and even there – just their own patched version of gnome.

I’ve been able to do significant editing and rendering to web and dvd videos with kdenlive….the only thing I haven’t been able to do yet is burn a blueray disc..but I’m hoping that isn’t too far off.

@Douglas E Knapp I had looked at Blender a while back but for what we need to do it seemed too complex. I’m also not sure whether it handles multiple video tracks on the timeline, which is essential for us.

I tried Openshot again the other day, but it takes too long to read in the video files that are too be processed. And then it crashed as soon as I tried to render (export) an edited file. Save early, save often, right? :)

Anyway, we have software that really works us and maybe that’s all that should matter. It’s unfortunate that it’s WIndows only, but as I have tried to point out it’s about productivity.

@Pierre Not knowing what you need it to do, it is hard to comment but it is very easy to use just for movies. You just open up the track you need and position it on the timeline thingy. You then put the next track on the next line. You can then add blends or whatever you want and you can edit each track right there in the viewer. When you are done just render it out. It is true that this bit of blender is just a small bit in a very big program but if you focus on just this little bit you can learn it in a few minutes.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRwrEU6KDYY&list=UUSEjH_FTah5DVY_z4xMgUsw&index=1&feature=plcp This is a link to my video showing how to do it. I made some mistakes in this video and it is a bit dated but you will get the idea enough to try it yourself and learn more later.

FYI the “windows is easy to use” “Linux is hard to use” is a fallacy. If you learn GNU/Linux software *first* Windows is much harder. [That’s why those happy Gates Foundation folks have given away so many freebies to schools and public libraries. Once you’re hooked, switching is hard, especiallly if ypou’re not a youngster.]

Something to remember: this is a good article but it *is* a couple of years old… As some of you may know, things change quickly in the digital world.

In my experience, known free software problems are likely to be fixed pretty quickly by the free software community.

That wasn’t true for the first Windows proprietary video editing suite I bought had a “known” bug of *not burning DVDs* . . . needless to say, I didn’t discover the fact untl long after purchasing and learning to use it. Their advice: buy the upgrade (even though it *still* had the same *KNOWN* issue)

When something doesn’t work (and how much of what doesn’t work in commercial software, particularly in video editing software) is because the DRM to “prevent piracy” only actually prevents ordinary users from using the software effectively; I doubt DRM makes commercial bootleggers even blink.

So you continue to bit** around complaining that linux video editing sucks because it’s slow, buggy and doesn’t have features but then complain that “it’s tooo huuuurd” when given a good solution for the problem ( Blender ) ?

I’ve been editing my sports videos for a couple years ( 720p/1080p ) with both Blender and PiTiVi and i can count the times they’ve crashed with the fingers of one hand and never had problems with speed, be it with my 12 core & 16GB workstation or with my ITX C2D with 4 paltry GB or RAM.

You just seem someone who’s frustrated because you cannot figure out how to work with Linux, something my young kids can do without a problem.

I am getting a bit sick of comments like this. Use BLENDER 3D!!!!!!!! It does not crash, it is powerful and it has more features than anything that you could pay for. How many programs out there can do camera tracking? Inserting animanton into your film using camera tracking? Complex fades that interack with your own art work? Plus of course all the basics. Be sure to watch the new film coming out that is made by the Blender foundation using almost nothing but blender. It is called Tears of Steal and should be out soon! (late August 2012) Lets stop the anti-linux propaganda! These guys that are payed to go around the net and put down open source are really starting to bug me.

good article, i am reading the comments as well, why so much hate on Linux? i just tried it yesterday and i love it so far (Ubuntu). and besides my video editing needs are much more basic than most anyways.

i want a good program that is good for making amvs (animated music videos) basically editing clips, adding effects and audio, which i am sure that most if not all video editing software does. from what i read here if i really want to go advanced i could use blender but i tried blender (for 3d modeling only though) and its quite hard. i will try it again and learn in but i am looking for something a bit simpler yet with lots of good effects. which one on this list (or not on the list) is good for a beginner. i have used Windows Live Movie Maker which is pretty simple and i know my way around it ok, maybe there are some features in it i don’t know about but i know a decent amount about it. maybe i would like something a bit more advanced but not too advanced.

Summer, some pointers. Go into preferences:Editing and turn up the undo buffer and also preferences:System:memory Cache Limit for the video buffer to the max for you machine. Turn on the Cycles GPU rendering (not for film but 3d work) under compute device. Preferences:interface, I like to check rotate around selection.

Do all this in a basic newly opened blender session. Then click save as default. Then when you open a new blend you will always have these presets select. If you do this mid work in some blend you are working that blend will become your default (almost never what you want to do). You might also want to skim through the addons. Blender has a lot of power that comes turned off by default but nothing much for film editor.

When working a film convert it from movie format to a bunch of stills (you can render it so. I think andrew has a video on this). Make sure to do this in a unique directory because you get about 24 pics per second. The format for these pics should be png or if you want to do a lot of composting then OpenExr is the way to go but the files are bigger and might slow down and older machine. Think of it this way. PNG has 0-255 for each color of each pixel, whole numbers only. Try multiplying that by .1 and then by 1000 a few times and see what you get. The other system uses floating point math for each dot and that keeps it high quality. PNG works but don’t expect much in the way of high quality compositing.

Wow! Just decided to play with video editing for the fun of it and downloaded AviDemux because it was the first on the list. Within minutes I had taken a short video of local lightning with lots of dead time between flashes, cut out the dead time to make a much shorter video of just the flashes and it came out great! So incredibly simple to use right out of the box.

Good article but what really enlightened me , were the comments! I read all the stuff here, while searching for a simple, home user friendly, video editor. Thanks for suggestion of using the OpenShot. It is really similar to WMM, I used few years ago. May not have all features but hey what do we want for free :) Happy with this editor. The beauty is always in the eye of the beholder isn’t it? For those having problems with the Linux world, why bother even looking here, order a super professional program, pay the bill(if you’re just a “wish to be professional” you may have some problems with that) never look back… in anger! you will still have to learn a lot :)

I’m having trouble with avisynth, just the process of editing with it. I know virtualdub is connected with it, but I can’t find anyway to connect virtualdub with windows movie maker, well to open it(capture video). Anyhow, I know will try Linux. Will it give the same quality as I see on my computer when it is uploaded to youtube? Yes, beginner here…

first time comments,been using linux now for about 3 years and boy have i learned a lot.mostly into making movies and iam always looking for better and easier software.self taught,trial and error but hard knocks teaches us how to help ourselves and others.not throwing any stones,about the easiest program is ubuntu,set-up with devede,google chrome,vlc,k3b,k9 copy,deluge,ktorrent,transmission,and so far have bee n able to do everything i need to do.always trying to better myself so iam going to try cinnelera.good luck to all. s sparkey

My purpose is to edit the .m2ts files produced by my camcorder, with possibly the ability of grabbing frames to jpg. I am currently stuck on Pinnacle Studio on Windows. It works great but it have many bugs and sometimes let you waste huge amounts of time without producing anything. I would really like to switch to a good video editor under Linux, since Ubuntu is the OS I use more often and I hate to boot Windows just to use the video editor. Here are the results I had on a 64 bit, 4-cores PC with 4 GB of RAM and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.

1) Openshot It opens my files and I can see them without any freezing. So far the better, but development stopped in 2012 and it lacks the frame grabbing feature. It could have become a serious alternative to win programs, but they should come back to development.

2) Avidemux It ask strange things when opening the m2ts files and ends up with a green screen with nothing visible. Not usable on my video files.

3) Cinelerra It looks really professional, with all those screens around, but it complains about a small “shmmax” variable in my kernel. I fixed this, but when it loads my files, it is unable to show them. The play starts and jumps to the end of the file, without showing anything. Unusable.

4) Kdenlive It does not even show the m2ts files among those loadable by the program. Unusable.

5) Kino This is an editor specialized on DV files. All other kinds of video are converted to DV, using a lot of time. I tried to import an m2ts of about 130 MB and it tooks more than 5 minutes. Just imagine how much time you would need with GB files… Not to mention the doubled (or more) disk space. After that, it jups to the end of the clip, exactly like Cinelerra. Unusable for me.

Please note that to get a new version of Pinnacle Studio you must pay about 60 euros here in Europe. So I would easily pay a similar price to someone developing a REAL video editor for Linux !

George Looney March 5, 2015 at 12:10 pm What are your results with Blender 3d? PS do get the newest version from their web site 2.73a and expect the next few to be better with films. 2.74 is due out on the 10th of March 2015 or so and likely a bug fix a few weeks after.